The Brotherton Library is a 1936 Grade II listed Neoclassical building with some art deco fittings, located on the main campus of the University of Leeds.

[1] At that point, the library contained approximately 65,000 volumes, but the Great Hall's undercroft had long been full and the overflow of books had been distributed around the campus.

Passavant's successor, Dr Richard Offor, was charged with the task of building a new University Library, and Lord Brotherton agreed to fund it.

In 1927, the firm of Henry Vaughan Lanchester, Thomas Geoffry Lucas and Thomas Arthur Lodge ("Lanchester, Lucas & Lodge") was selected to provide "a monumental Beaux-Arts composition which would completely obscure from the outside world all the existing regrettable Waterhouse buildings with grand red brick and Portland stone".

The façades of the Chemistry and Parkinson buildings, facing the main road, are of Portland stone, but the exterior of the Brotherton Library is of unadorned red brick.

However, the delay in the Parkinson's construction, initially because of a shortage of funding, meant that the Brotherton's plain exterior was on view for fourteen years.